Wednesday, October 31, 2007

In many parts of the country, the temperatures have started their downward spiral towards winter.

This is good on several fronts.

I like leaves. I like them even more when they are deprived by the trunks of the trees to which they are attached and turn orange, red, and gold. Not many things in nature suffer such a pretty death.

I like sweaters. Cooler temps bring out the Merino wool and baggy pants in all of us. Which coincides perfectly with the copious amounts of candy corn, Hershey's Miniatures, and Milk Duds I will be consuming. Fluffy clothing being the perfect foil for fluffy flesh.

I like my lower electric bill. Right now, I am happily experiencing that one month period when the A/C doesn't crank all day, and the heat has yet to be turned on. More money to spend on baggy pants and half price Halloween candy.

Finally, the lower daily temps mean that we should begin experiencing a lull in the sickening reports of children being forgotten and baked to death in the backs of their parents' vehicles.

Will they still be forgotten? Of course.

Absentmindedness, self centeredness, and stupidity don't hibernate for the winter. But at least with temps not reaching into triple digits, these children have a much improved chance of surviving the carelessness.

Unfortunately, however, some parts of the country won't enjoy the cool breezes or that lull for some time to come, leaving small children at serious risk of death due to parental brain farts.

Which is exactly, and tragically, what happened yesterday in Phoenix, where daytime temperatures are still firmly in the 90's.

17 month old Ryan Duchene was pronounced dead on the scene by EMT workers after being discovered in the back of his mother's car - where he had baked for 7 hours - while she worked her shift at Hooters.

Ashley Duchene, his 22 year old mother, has been charged this morning with negligent homicide.

What sets this case apart from other just like it in which the guilty parent receives no legal admonishment, no charges of any kind?

Well, Ashley is on the record as having said she "wanted her freedom more than her son."

Yes, a mom for the record books.

According to Phoenix Police Sgt. Joel Tranter, their investigation found she had made statements to relatives about not wanting to care for him and wanting her freedom. They also found that relatives had previously intervened on many occasions and taken Ryan away for periods of time out of concern for his safety.

Pretty damning anecdotal evidence.

But even without it, she is guilty as sin of forgetting she had a child sitting right behind her.

She has told police she intended to drop him off at daycare and forgot.

Explain that to me.

You pick up your son in your arms. Carry him to the car. Strap him into his carseat. Get in to take him to daycare so you can continue on to work. And then you just ... forget him?

Well, not quite.

Officer Trantor said, "When she was driving to work, she made a brief statement that she actually looked in her rear view mirror, saw a young child seated behind her in the child seat. Exactly what happened after that, we're not sure."

Look, I'm not saying she left him on purpose. I'm not in her head. And I don't think that is the mindset in 99% of these types of deaths. But I am saying this is a girl who had made no bones about telling people she didn't want the responsibilities that go along with having a child. That put Ryan in peril. Period.

Which is heartbreaking considering the number of people who desperately want all those responsibilities and more, and cannot conceive.

And before anyone gets started on me for mentioning her place of employment above, STOP. It happens to be where this child died.

Do I think highly of Hooters? No. And yes, I have been in one before. I will NOT go back. The guys are ridiculous, the girls slobber all over them in the hopes that their tip will increase in direct proportion to the erection growing in the guy's pants.

The place is a temple of delusions. Relatively attractive (I use the word relative because the girls you see on the billboards are NOT the ones you see working in the actual Hooters.) girls who feed the egos of the increasingly drunk men who honestly think these women would give them the time of day outside the establishment.

But, Hooters is not without class. You can get a plate of Hot Wings and a bottle of Dom Perignon for $199.99.

But I digress...

Those responsibilities she didn't want? Gone. That freedom she wanted back? Gone, too.

Another innocent child died Tuesday. Struggling, suffering, finally succumbing to the deadly combination of heat and stupidity.

There are some events in life which simply require a stopwatch in order to track them effectively.

Take the Olympic Games. They wouldn't be nearly so stimulating to watch (although it would lend a folksy wholesomeness to the affair) if the announcer used terms like "Yes, ladies and gents, Jones just beat Smith by the skin of his teeth."

No, we prefer to know that the gold was won by .006975467 gazillionths of a second.

And during labor, there is always someone on hand timing one contraction to the next in order to alert the woman of the impending pain — as if she might somehow miss it on her own.

Yet despite all the synchronized, quartz action watches and lunar Farmer's Almanac calendars available, there is only one thing I need to alert me to the arrival of Halloween...

All the jelly beans and stale Peeps from Easter have finally run out.

Like some eerie eighth wonder of the world, my candy bowl no longer runneth over just as the Harvest Moon begins its ascent into the cool Fall air. With Swiss-like movement, October 31st will appear on the calendar and my blood sugar level will disappear into my shoes. (Come to think of it, my shoes are another indicator...I am no longer picking strands of six month old Easter grass off of them.) I will resort to eating those items I would not look twice at back in April: the black jelly beans, those robin egg speckled things, packets of Equal.

All right, all right, I admit it, "My name is Linda and I am a Sugaraholic".

I live from one season of sucrose to the next, gleefully chomping my way from December to April on Santa's candy canes, practically pulling my fillings out from April to October with pounds of jelly beans, and living like an Oz Munchkin from October to December on a steady supply of Hershey's miniatures.

My family has tried to help, resorting to everything short of an intervention, but they have failed.

My husband has tried placing the candy on the high shelves, assuming his vertically challenged wife won't be able to reach. Ha! Like a mountain goat in a Ricola commercial, I could scale the Alps if the promise of M&Ms were at the summit.

My children have resorted to hiding their Halloween haul in an attempt to actually enjoy the treats themselves. I've got news for them, those wrappers protect the Tootsie Rolls from the stink of being hidden in your shoes, and I know about the Webkinz Panda you hollowed out and re-stuffed with Skittles.

Even though I have been busted by my own children countless times for illegally importing Reese's Cups into my mouth, there was one instance that made me think perhaps I do need help.

There I stood, in the darkened recesses of our pantry, like some bad outtake from The Blair Witch Project, frantically racing through the shelves, breathing heavily, in search of a miniature Butterfinger I just knew I could smell. As I found not one, but two of the intoxicating bars cleverly hidden inside an old Tomato Soup can, I heard my daughters entering the front door from school. They jerked open the pantry door in search of their after school snack and were greeted by the sight of their mother, pupils abruptly dilating in response to the light, chocolate drool on her chin, able to only greet them with, "Thfppmmfffppptttt?".

This year my children have already decided to take king sized pillow cases out with them as they Trick or Treat, if only to collect enough candy that they might actually get to enjoy a Kit Kat or two. Dreamers.

And soon, as the Farmer's Almanac will attempt to predict the date of snowfall, I will know in my sucrose bloated gut that Christmas is upon us. For long before the bells jingle and the stores are sold out of Nintendo Wiis and TMX Elmos (seriously, people, how many versions of this damned red doll do we need? Tickle Me, Giggle With Me, Chicken Dance, Scratch Me, Let The Dog Chew On Me...), my husband will begin reading to our children from that age old seasonal favorite, "Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring...except Mom frantically slobbering over one last kernel of candy corn."

Having a busy day on this end, but stumbled across this and wanted to share the laugh.

You people know I can't stay up late enough to actually watch Letterman, but then, that's what the internet is for - pathetic souls like me whose eyelids drop faster than a load of turkeys from the WKRP helicopter, when 9pm rolls around.

(By the way, bonus points to anyone who actually gets that reference...)

Anyhoo, enjoy Jerry Seinfeld's take on being a father, I know I did...

Monday, October 29, 2007

With the cold and flu season already taking hold across the country, household medicine cabinet hinges are going to be getting a workout.

Unfortunate timing then that Tylenol recently had to recall so many of its children's products due to "rare instances of misuse leading to accidental overdose, especially in children under the age of two".

These products were recalled and parents have been encouraged to remove them from their own shelves.

Actually, truth be told, I have printed out TWO. I know, I know, "greedy bitch". Sue me. I have three kids and a husband who get sick each year and then pass the bug back and forth like a hackie sack for months.

Two is how many you can print out, so have at it. (Of course, you can delete the cookie and purge your history after printing two and then go back and print two more, and so on, and so on...not that I would know that...ahem...) Medicine is a huge expense, and every coupon - especially $5 ones - can help ease the pain on a family's wallet while easing the symptoms of the season.

GET YOUR COUPON HERE - look for the Download Coupon link on the page. (You may need to download the coupon printer program, but it will walk you through it and takes just a moment.)

Despite the reams of medical journals, countless hours of studies, and thousands of preserved, smoke-blackened lungs populating the nation’s science museums, people still continue to light up.

I don’t smoke.

Have I tried it? Sure, I was a teenager once upon a time – I tried a lot of things. But I immediately hated it. Inhaling was torture, I stank from head to toe from being in a room of puff happy teens, and I tasted like I had licked an ashtray for a full day after. So it wasn’t a difficult choice to say ‘no thanks’ the next time the pack came around.

These days, my children get incensed when they see a grown-up smoking, especially around their kids. Sure I have taught them why they should not do it, and they are not stupid to begin with. They all know that when a house burns down around a person, that individual is likely going to die from smoke inhalation long before they feel the lick of the flames.

So why replicate that scenario by intentionally inhaling smoke?

As much as I have taught them why they should not smoke, I have also taught them that what another adult does is not under my jurisdiction. That it is another adult’s right to smoke. I might not get it. But as long as they are not second handing me to death, it’s not my business.

That being said, don’t expect me to not have a reaction to this...

Caught by a photographer for the Roanoke Times, Mellisa Williamson puffed away as she was interviewed for a piece on the "unpopular "traffic-calming" measures under way on Bullitt Avenue, where she lives."

The caption said she worries about the effect of jackhammer noise on her unborn child.

She obviously doesn’t worry about the effect of smoking though, as one can see she is as far along in her pregnancy as she is in her cigarette break.

The resulting downpour of comments to the paper were as thick as the ashes raining from the skies over California.

And with good reason. There is no defending her actions.

Look, I realize she is not exactly making history by smoking while pregnant. Heck, my entire generation was born to parents who thought it a glamorous and benign thing to do – like the three martini lunch.

But to paraphrase the old Virginia Slims ad slogan, in terms of medical knowledge, we’ve "come a long way, baby."

And even though L&M Cigarettes once proclaimed them to be "Just what the doctor ordered", doctors today know that the "order" is to STOP.

Smoking is estimated to account for 20 percent to 30 percent of low birth-weight babies, up to 14 percent of preterm deliveries and 10 percent of all infant deaths. Asthma is twice as likely in children whose mothers smoke more than 10 cigarettes per day.

And this is just the filtered tip of the iceberg in terms of potential harm.

Yet in a follow up article by Roanoke columnist Joe Kennedy Miss Williamson couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that.

She says she knows smoking is bad because people have criticized her since she started lighting up 20 years ago. (She is 35.)

"I really don't pay that much attention to it," she said. "If people don't like it, that's their opinion. They've got theirs and I've got mine."

And she actually defends her choice with "my doctor said it would be good if I cut back, but if I totally quit, it would not only cause stress on me but it would cause stress on the baby."

OK, my kneejerk reaction was to jerk my knee into that doctor’s groin, but then I thought about it, and there probably is some wisdom to not immediately going from a 15 year-two-pack-a-day addiction (and yes, nicotine is an addiction) to a platter of cold turkey.

The placenta may act as a filter, but it cannot catch everything, and her baby is just as hopped up as is she.

That being said, the goal should be cold turkey, not just a few less a day.

But Mellisa has no intention of quitting. She says she has tried in the past but it is just too hard.

Yeah, well, so is raising a child. Deal with it.

I’m sorry, but while it may be an adult’s right to choose to light up, it is certainly not a baby’s. They are complete victims of a parent who simply chooses to indulge themselves rather than defend their unborn child.

The world is full of dangers enough – from pedophiles to global warming to toys carved from blocks of lead. How any parent-to-be wouldn’t want to protect their child from everything they can control, is beyond me.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Webster's definition: excitingly appealing; glamorous (I think we can all agree on the clinical definition, correct? After all, when we interpret someone as sexy, there is that rush of exciting adrenaline. Think Brad Pitt or George Clooney in an edible thong.)

Esquire Magazine's definition: Charlize Theron - with or without edible thong - (I feel I can safely speak for the congregation when I say, "Duh.")

Yes, in response to Esquire's yearly need to bestow the honor of "Sexiest Woman Alive" upon a female - (brief tangent: do they really need to include the word 'alive'? I mean, regardless of how individual is the interpretation of sexy, I think we can all agree that there is not much about a dead woman that reeks sex appeal. Well, everything about a dead person reeks, but not in a sexy kind of way. Never mind... where was I?) - this year's recipient being Theron - Maxim decided to turn the tables and hand out honors for those women who cause a man's testicles to seek refuge deep within their lower intestine.

Not exactly the highest of honors, but as they say, any PR is good PR, so let's further examine their rationale...

Britney Spears: Oh how the mighty sexy have fallen. This girl was once responsible for singlehandedly (all pun intended) raising the stock prices of Jergens and Kleenex. Nowadays, men use her mental image to keep from getting aroused.

Maxim contributed her placement on their list to "two kids, two useless ex-husbands, and about 23 pounds of Funyun pudge."

OUCH.

I take a tad of issue with that. Having kids does not automatically render one unsexy. I have three and can still turn a head. The ex-husband part? Well, that unsexiness owes more to bad choices - K-Fed is not exactly a Playgirl centerfold candidate. And as for the added weight?

Give me a break.

OK, she may not be as ripped, toned, and taut as she was at 18 when she cavorted with snakes on stage, but she is not exactly in pre-Weight Watchers-Kirstie Alley land either.

I think her unsexiness is actually the culmination of years of downward spiraling behavior and the constant reinforcement in the press of just how lacking in smarts she is. Sure, a man may fantasize about getting jiggy with an airheaded centerfold, but one who beats a car with an umbrella, shaves her head in public, and constantly shows her bare kootch off to paparazzi? (Lest you think that was an unfortunate one time event, think again. Just as recent as last week, she was once again snapped sans underwear as she climb out of her car like a cowboy getting off a horse.)

Yep, when it comes to sex appeal, Britney is about as desired as salt on a genital wart these days.

Next up, Sandra Oh.

I don't get this one. Sandra Oh - best known for her role on Grey's Anatomy - is smart, a great actress (loved her naked fearlessness in Sideways), and beautiful - well, at least I think so.

Maxim bashed her for her "cold bedside manner and boyish figure."

Um, guys, the bedside manner is on a TV show - she's acting. And as for a "boyish figure"?

I fail to see anything here that screams "high school quarterback" or "alter boy".

Another winner was Madonna.

Madonna?!?

Yes, Madonna. Look, aside from the fact that I have a good friend who would never speak to me again if I did not defend his goddess's honor, I am a bit stymied by this one.

Madonna practically wrote the book on being sexy - well, if we're being technical, she did write a book on SEX. She turned the 80's on all by herself. But Maxim cites her "bellyaching and rapid postnuptial deterioration" for her placement on their list.

Bellyaching? Sure, she is outspoken, but so is Bono. They are passionate and use their fame to direct the spotlight to worthy issues.

And if this is the definition of "rapid postnuptial deterioriation", sign me up. (I hardly think Guy Richie is complaining and her hard body puts 20 year olds to shame.)

Maxim based her inclusion on her "translucent skin, rat's nest mane and lashes that look more like surgically attached bats".

I base it on her penchant for missing concerts, cutting herself during an interview, constant abysmal, drug addled behavior, and well... that "rat's nest mane, and lashes that look more like surgically attached bats".

Seriously, if Britney Spears is your garden variety trainwreck, Amy Winehouse is the engineer of a Chinese Maglev.

Plus, she's just naaasty to look at. Forget Rehab, if I were a man, I'd be saying "No, no, no" to Miss Winehouse.

Finally, we get to the person named top Unsexy Woman: Sara Jessica Parker, best known for her turn as Carrie Bradshaw on the much missed series Sex In The City.

Really? Carrie Bradshaw is unsexy?

Slammed as a "Barbaro-faced broad" and "the least sexy woman in a group of very unsexy women", Sara took top (or bottom, depending on how you look at things) honors.

I don't get it.

Yes, she does have a longish face, and a body which trends towards the turn-sideways-and-disappear end of the spectrum, but I would never put her on an unsexy list.

But again, I guess that's why "sexiness" or the lack thereof is an arbitrary, up-the-the-individual interpretation.

I think of sexy as more of a vibe, the way a person carries him/herself, how they interact with others, their intelligence, their wit - not just how large is their spice rack or how firm are their abs.

Heck, I think Jon Stewart is sexy. And don't leave me alone in a room with Stephen Colbert. The truthiness is that I would strip him naked and ride him like Barbaro.

And Bill Maher? Well, Rudy would just have to understand.

I'll give Maxim Britney and Amy. Not since Joe Perry and Steven Tyler has a more Toxic Twosome existed. But leave Sara, Sandra and Madonna alone.

There is intelligence, carriage, and confidence to spare with those three. And THAT is what true sexiness is all about.

A big bosom or edible thong worthy asscheeks are just icing on the cake.

Friday, October 26, 2007

New Year's Eve 2003 - a party that would forever alter the course of a teenager's life.

And a blow job that would be heard round the world.

Sorry, but that's what the Genarlow Wilson case boils down to.

A couple teenagers engaging in what may be distasteful to many, but what is rather commonplace in high school circles - oral promiscuity.

That she was only 15, and Genarlow was 17 made the act a major no-no according to the Georgia law books. And with the act caught on videotape, he was charged with aggravated child molestation.

And sent to jail, where he has been ever since.

Of course, politicians, radio jocks, talking heads, regular citizens, etc, all protested the charges and resulting prison time. Heck, even the prosecutor called it "unfair", but under the guidelines, as they stood, there was nothing to be done about the mandatory ten year sentence.

But the wheels were set in motion for some changes.

In 2006, the law he "broke" was changed to make oral sex between teens close in age a misdemeanor. Still ridiculous, in my opinion, but progress. Unfortunately, the new law would not be afforded any retroactive magical powers, so it would not change Genarlow's punishment.

Still, his lawyers and supporters pushed forward. And today, finally, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled (4-3) to let him out of jail. NOW.

They ruled his sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment and directed a lower court to reverse the conviction and release him.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion that the changes in the law "represent a seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants."

Sears wrote that the severe punishment makes "no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment" and that Wilson's crime did not rise to the "level of adults who prey on children."

Excuse me as I violate the whole separation of church and state thing, but AMEN.

Look, I have never defended the group sex mindset, loose morals, obvious underaged inebriation, or YouTube mentality that made for the act being taped to begin with - these kids all needed better supervision than to be able to slink off to a hotel room and party like Belushi in Animal House - but the bottom line is that these were a bunch of teenagers partying together.

And the oral sex was consensual. No one was holding a gun to that girl's head. And believe me, Genarlow was hardly in a dominant position throughout the act.

His mother is expecting him to be released today. I hope they are able to expedite that matter. He deserves sunshine, homecooked meals, hugs from all sides, and a shot at the future he had so stupidly yanked away.

I have watched interviews with him. The young man is strong, he is intelligent, he is unbowed. He has been trampled on by the justice system, but Genarlow Wilson has not been crushed.

I wish him well. I wish him a bright future. I wish him time to reconnect with his family and friends.

And most of all, I wish him the wisdom to keep his sex life to himself from now on. You've had enough time in front of the cameras, Gen.